With Two New Competitions, XPRIZE Tackles Water Scarcity and Women’s Safety

XPRIZE has announced the launch of two new competitions namely the Water Abundance XPRIZE and the Anu & Naveen Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE.ETtech | Updated: October 25, 2016, 20:37 IST

XPRIZE has announced the launch of two new competitions namely the Water Abundance XPRIZE and the Anu & Naveen Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE.

Aimed at sparking breakthrough solutions to two urgent grand challenges, the US$1.75M Water Abundance XPRIZE sponsored by Tata Group and Australian Aid aims to alleviate the global water crisis with energy-efficient technologies that will harvest fresh water from thin air. The Water Abundance XPRIZE challenges teams from around the world to revolutionize access to fresh water by creating a device that extracts a minimum of 2,000 liters of water per day from the atmosphere using 100% renewable energy, at a cost of no more than 2 cents per liter. The two-year competition includes five months for team registration, seven months for initial solution development and twelve months to complete rounds of testing and judging by expert panels.

The US$1M Women’s Safety XPRIZE sponsored by Anu and Naveen Jain will leverage technology to empower communities with a transformative solution that ensures women’s safety. The winning team’s solution will autonomously and inconspicuously trigger an emergency alert and transmit information to a network of community responders, all within 90 seconds and at an annual cost of US$40 or less. The 20-month competition includes four months for team registration, six months for initial solution development and ten months to develop and test final solutions for judging by expert panels.

Teams for both the competitions will be judged based on the standards they set in their plans, as well as the performance and scalability of their solutions.

Zenia Tata, executive director, Global Expansion, XPRIZE said, “The launch of these two new XPRIZEs in India puts us on an unstoppable path for grand impact. India is becoming a leading global innovation hub and that itself speaks volumes of the caliber of innovators and entrepreneurs this country hosts. We want to cultivate this spirit and encourage exponential breakthroughs that will positively transform the lives of a billion people.”

Entrepreneurs and XPRIZE Trustee, Anu Jain shared, “Ensuring women are safe is the foundation for economic prosperity and safer communities. When government’s fail to keep their people safe, community members and entrepreneurs share a collective responsibility to rapidly respond to those threats. With the power of technology, the Women’s Safety XPRIZE will help arm communities in an unprecedented way.”

Co-sponsoring the Water Abundance XPRIZE, Dr. Gopichand Katragadda, CTO, TATA Group, said, “Water is a precious resource. We need to remind ourselves that only 2.5 percent of all the water on the earth is fresh water. Globally, we are dealing with the twin problem of scarcity and distribution of usable water. We are excited to mobilize the brightest minds to help generate solutions through the Water Abundance XPRIZE. We are confident that the outcomes driven by XPRIZE will provide innovative fresh water access options.”

XPRIZE, the world’s leader in designing and managing incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, launched these competitions in India to cultivate a wider, more diverse innovation ecosystem while also encourage problem solvers to directly address dire problems close to home.